


The Strength of Water

by corbaccio



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Angst, Dreams vs. Reality, Dreamsharing, Grief/Mourning, Multi, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pining, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-21
Updated: 2020-10-25
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:27:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27138688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/corbaccio/pseuds/corbaccio
Summary: The war’s gone cold, the titan curse undone. In the wreckage of the new world, Armin and Mikasa can only live on without Eren. But still, they sleep, and there he comes to them, a ghost rising from the dark waters of a dream.(Spoilers up to the current chapter of the manga.)
Relationships: Armin Arlert/Eren Yeager, Mikasa Ackerman & Armin Arlert, Mikasa Ackerman & Armin Arlert & Eren Yeager
Comments: 10
Kudos: 51





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> this fic is semi-related to an eremin fic of mine ([a cold glitter of souls](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26579185)) though in concept rather than directly. i just couldn't get over the idea of eren appearing in paths via dreams. imagine armin and mikasa struggling in the aftermath of killing eren (a pretty popular theory right now), and then—the relief, the joy, but also the unbearable pain when he comes to them when they sleep … well, i just had to write this. almost a lotus-eater machine scenario, though armin and mikasa are well aware of what's going on.
> 
> note: i tagged major character death, but only in reference to eren's death beforehand. there will be no character deaths within the fic itself.

Armin was alone in the mess hall, the only sounds his own breathing and the wind outside. It was dark, though not so dark that he couldn’t see without a lantern. The moon and the stars cast the room in an odd pale light. It was the middle of the night. Everyone was—or should have been, at least—deeply asleep.

It was nearly impossible to be alone unless you kept these kind of hours. Which Armin did not: he rose at five in the morning and was in bed by eleven, duties allowing. This sleeplessness was new. Well, it was more the dreams that deterred him from sleep, and while they themselves were not novel, their intensity was. Dreams so real that Armin felt he had hardly slept at all. So real that his flesh prickled at the memory of that peculiar place, no matter how many bedclothes he wore or how many blankets he piled on. He had been having them intermittently for months now, but before they had always slipped away behind the veil before Armin could grasp them back again. Before, the dreams had been easy to dismiss; the melancholy feeling they left him with would be shaken loose by breakfast. Then he would sleep dreamlessly for days, or even a week, a perfect peaceful blankness. 

The dreams had become more vivid. In colour, sound, sense. More common, too: Armin had dreamt the same dream almost every night this week, though it remained a vague and curious thing when he awoke. Sleep, which had once been a refuge, had turned into a miserable chore. Armin was never anything less than bone-tired by the time he collapsed on to his cot every evening, but he had begun to resent the very sight of it.

At night, the mess hall took on an eerie quality. Empty as it rarely was, and chilly with its high ceilings and barren floor. Around him, rows and rows of benches stood empty; together with the silence and the moonlight streaming through the skylights above, it brought to mind a church. Armin had never prayed, not once in his life, though he had enjoyed Onyankopon’s explanation of his religion and his worship, the power of it. Of pressing one’s hands together, or offering coin, or the simple act of believing with such wholehearted faith. 

_I would love a good night’s sleep, undisturbed_ , Armin thought, and he grinned wryly at himself, even as he imagined the words cast up into the ether of the sky. If any god were real, Armin knew his sins precluded him from even the most trivial miracle. Still he pressed his hands together in his lap, and then on to the table, as though to make them easier seen would improve his chances. 

He yanked them apart at the sound of footsteps. Brisk, some weight behind them but a lightness of movement. Footsteps he knew very well. Her face at first was a pale blur to his startled gaze, but soon Mikasa came into clearer focus, standing—rigid as if at attention—in the doorway at the end of the hall. Armin felt himself swallow. The sight of her filled him with nerves, though her expression was hard to discern from such a distance. 

She watched him for a moment, nodded. Armin noticed then that she carried no candle, and wondered if, like him, she had risen straight from her bed before wandering here. As she made her way over, Armin saw her bare feet. They made a soft, tacking sound against the cold hardwood floor. He looked at his own, likewise bare, and went to ask if she was alright. 

Mikasa spoke before he could.

“Did you have a bad dream?” she asked. 

Armin’s mouth went slack. He felt his pulse quicken, the hair at the nape of his neck bristling. An unwarranted reaction, he knew, but still a strange thrill of fear went through him. He tried to swallow it down. 

“I can’t sleep in the first place,” Armin said. It wasn’t a lie necessarily, but Mikasa was very good at seeing straight through to the core of his meaning, and so he turned the question back on her. “Are you okay? You couldn’t sleep either?”

Now that he asked it, and that he had adjusted to her in the dark, Armin took her in proper. Mikasa’s clothes were rumpled, as if she’d been tossing and turning. Her face was set in its default neutrality, but Armin’s stomach tightened: it wasn’t that she looked like she’d been crying, exactly, but her eyes were rimmed red. A cowlick kinked the straight silk of her hair. Armin barely resisted the urge to tease it between his fingers. 

Mikasa frowned, though her expression flattened when she spoke. “I woke up about an hour ago and I couldn’t get back to sleep.”

Armin glanced at the clock at the far end of the hall. He’d been there for about an hour, too, though it had felt longer. Now he checked, he saw that it was technically early morning rather than night—very, very early, an hour you wouldn’t think existed unless you were awake for it. Armin patted the bench next to him, and Mikasa sat without further invitation. He hadn’t noticed before, but up close Armin saw that she was in uniform—no boots, no gear, only the smart black shirt and trousers, as if she meant to blend in with the night. It made her bare feet more striking, even next to his own.

The vulnerability of it stuck in his throat. As though they were children at the dinner table, waiting a plate to be set in front of them. Funny how a memory could sit inside you so quietly and then emerge with such speed, such force: Armin was transported to Eren’s house in Shiganshina some ten years ago, the smell of his mother’s stew so thick in the air he could taste it even now. Him, Mikasa, and Eren, sat in a solemn row, oddly quiet in that way children go before one’s parents. 

The deliberate clearing of her throat dragged him out of his nostalgia. Mikasa was watching him with her typical silent intensity. 

“Armin. Did you have a dream?” she asked again.

“Hm?” Armin tried to sound nonchalant, but that Mikasa had repeated the question made it clear she had something on her mind. Armin let his gaze slide away from hers. “Well, yes, I… I got up to because I had to use the bathroom, though, and then I couldn’t get back to sleep.”

Honestly he hadn’t tried. Pissing had done little to ease the tight knot in his stomach, and he had resigned himself to a sleepless night without bothering to return to bed. He had managed on less hours, and usually his compounded exhaustion the next night guaranteed a deeper sleep. Though now he wished he had, if only to avoid this simple question.

 _Don’t ask about it_ , Armin thought. He didn’t want to talk about the dream. It felt peculiarly intimate, even to share with Mikasa. He tried not to examine too much in his own head, letting the familiar details of its landscape pass into the misty reach of sleep to be forgotten. He knew better, though. Armin knew the shape of words in Mikasa’s mouth before she spoke them, the subtle way she held herself when something bothered her. Even just from her neat profile in the dark.

Yes, her face—it gave nothing and everything away all at once. Perhaps it was just that Armin was so attuned to it, the barest shift in her manner. She was no less beautiful for the grief, strong and graceful still in the most minor things. Even the way she sat next to him—the easy swing of one leg over the bench, then the other, the muscles in her thighs apparent as she did so—and then settling so quietly. Armin envied that about her. Over the past few months, he had felt increasingly hollow. Ugly, empty, as though something was wearing away at his interior and exterior. In a year’s time, he would be nothing more than a shell, a shed snake- or spider-skin; hardly a person at all. And in such proximity to Mikasa’s strength, her sad loveliness, he felt clumsy and weaker still.

Armin braced himself.

“I did. I had a dream,” Mikasa said. Armin stared at her. Her next words were inevitable. “I dreamt about Eren.”

Mikasa stared back, and for a long moment they held each other’s gaze. Even if Armin hadn’t wanted to, his silence spoke volumes. There was no point now talking around the point, and at least with Mikasa he could be honest. With Jean, Connie, Historia… talking about Eren was impossible. Armin was afraid at what they might say, because he said it to himself when his mind ran this familiar track—which it did, often, an indulgent pulling at the edges of a wound. 

_It’s time to move on. Eren made his choice, and you made yours. Live with the consequences. Live. For god’s sake, live already._

Armin sighed. This had become a confessional.

“Me too,” and as he said it, he saw Eren’s harrowing, handsome face in his mind’s eye. Armin tried to cast it away, but its afterimage remained: waxen skin, grey eyes, dark hair. “I’ve dreamt about him a few times, since…”

“A few?” Mikasa echoed. “I’ve dreamt about him a lot. Nearly every night this week, and frequently before then, but not so intensely.”

It was like all the warmth had been sucked out of the room. Gooseflesh rose on his arms, his scalp prickling. Mikasa’s honesty shocked him, and humbled him, because he had been trying so hard to ignore the dreams when she hadn’t wasted the energy over such agonising. But what shocked Armin more was that her experience mirrored his own so completely.

“Well, it’s only natural,” Armin said softly. It was what he had been telling himself as well, though it was cold comfort. “Eren’s… it’s been a really challenging time.”

Sometimes he still struggled to say it out loud. Even thinking it made his heart race, his palms clammy-cold: _Eren is dead. We killed him._ Doubly so with Mikasa, who wore her sadness like a physical shroud. They spoke of Eren rarely even amongst themselves. When they did, it was always so distant, so detached, as though he were some childhood friend they had not seen in ten years rather than a part of their soul they had willingly torn out. When Armin considered it alone—an uncommon thing with how busy he was, but still—in his room, or in his office, he would not notice his nails cutting into his palms until he went to touch something, and then he would see the deep red grooves pressed there like tally marks. 

Mikasa shook her head. “No,” she said, and her bluntness startled Armin, even as he didn’t understand exactly what she was refusing. “It’s not like that. These dreams are different.”

It was becoming more difficult to dismiss it all as mere coincidence. Armin looked up at Mikasa again, her face white and ethereal by the bluish light of the moon. But there was a light coming from within, too, a new one, more alive. As if she’d finally woken from a deep sleep.

He swallowed hard, and that Mikasa noticed. Her eyes followed the severe bob of his throat. Armin had never been the most subtle person, and Mikasa recognised his tells when so few did. Her scrutiny scoured him raw.

“Different? How do you mean?” he said, again forcing his voice steady, casual, curious.

Mikasa’s voice cut through his; she almost spoke over him with the urgency of her reply. “It just feels… strange. It doesn’t feel like a dream. Usually I wake up if I become aware that that’s what’s happening, that I’m dreaming—but I don’t in these. I know I’m asleep, and it’s not real, but still I stay there.”

 _Like an infinite staircase_ , Armin thought. Or walking down a tunnel, and seeing some light ahead yet never reaching its end no matter how far or for how long you walked. The dreams persisted when they should’ve ended. Armin opened his mouth and closed it. The problem was that he understood exactly what Mikasa meant, and likely that she felt the same. The dreams must have thrilled her as much as they did him. To see Eren, as beautiful as he ever was. His hair a little long but his face fresh, clean-shaven, his skin free of shifter-marks. Eyes as clear as glass. It was Eren as Armin wanted to remember him, and how much he loved him in these dreams—loved him in a way that he had never let himself love in reality, when so many of their memories were now tainted. 

One question rose to the forefront of Armin’s mind and stuck there.

“Mikasa,” he began, and stopped, because he was almost afraid to ask it. He was afraid that he knew the answer, and that when Mikasa said it aloud, there would be no going back.

She prompted him with a nod. 

“Why are you in uniform?” 

A gravid silence. Mikasa lifted her hands very slowly and deliberately, and set them flat on the table as if to physically anchor herself there. Her hands were steady. Armin could feel his own shaking in his lap, even with how he’d balled them into fists.

“I wanted to see if I could change something,” she said. Her voice was remote, so soft it was as though she wasn’t speaking to him at all. “Because I thought that might mean something, if I was in uniform in the dream.”

Nausea and exhilaration seized his stomach. Armin stared at Mikasa’s hands. Beneath the cuff of her shirtsleeve, he could just see the edge of a bandage. She wrapped her wrist even now there was no need to. Some habits were so hard to shake off. 

Armin asked without meaning to. The words sounded strange as he said them, as though it were not his mouth, nor his voice. “And were you?”

After a moment of deep thought—her eyes trained on Armin still, splitting him open, a haunting holy look—she nodded. “I was. And I don’t think it’s a dream. I think it feels so real because it is real.”  
  


* * *

  
‘Real’, Armin felt, was becoming an increasingly subjective term. 

At first he had tried to understand the strange realm that Eren had summoned them to. Eren had called it _paths_ , a place that linked every Eldian to one another, and to the Founding Titan at its core. Armin had never seen anything like it in all the hundreds of books he had read before, and none since. Even with free access to every illegal text he could have ever wanted, within the walls and outside them, Armin’s research was futile. And it was pointless now, anyway. What with Eren’s death, and the Founder gone with him.

Had it been real? It must have been, but that did not mean it existed in any physical sense. A plane of existence beyond mortal flesh, but an existence nevertheless. Sometimes Armin felt he had grasped it, or at least some sense of it; other times he yielded to its impossibility. It was hardly worth the headache when he had enough diplomatic matters to consider, and so he had shelved his efforts to understand exactly what it was. Now it had shot back to the top of his priorities.

As commander of the Survey Corps—a meaningless title with the military branches collapsing into each other, for there were no walls for the Garrison to defend nor titans for scouts to slaughter—but still Armin had a responsibility to Paradis. Supply chains, treaty and border negotiations, petty intra-district dramas—his desk was an ever-changing pile of papers, one ream finished only for another to take its place. So it was. Life went on, and with it politics and people required at least some shepherding.

There was never much time for personal matters. Armin had not allowed for them, and perhaps that had been its own kind of weakness; grieving had come secondary to most everything else. His revelation with Mikasa had put an end to that. Now Armin could not do anything without Eren on his waking mind, and the puzzle of his presence when asleep. 

Mikasa had confirmed what Armin had supposed to himself—not deliberately, for Armin had not asked her and she had spoken the words as though they were simple fact: “We go to that same place that he called us to before. That oceanless beach.”

Armin had tried very hard not to recognise it, but a part of him had always known. The infinite gentle sloping sands, the sky aglow. Unmistakeably the same: the dreams had felt familiar because it _was_ familiar. And so maybe they were not dreams at all, but a place beyond the material world, and Eren—despite being dead and thus unable to do anything but rot—had summoned them there. 

The thought made Armin let out a single hysterical laugh. Really, it was so absurd that he didn’t even want to consider it. But then, there was no being logical when it came to Eren. Even at seven years old, Eren had operated entirely under his own obscure rules and expected the world to bend beneath them. Armin smiled to himself. Eren would have found that funny, too. Yes, he saw it so clearly it could have been a memory—he would have said it without any irony, with flat truth, and Eren would have laughed. And Armin would have wanted to kiss him so badly, as he always did, his own laughter cut clean through by the tidal strength of that urge. 

Was it better that it was real or that him and Mikasa had lost their minds? Frankly Armin wasn’t sure. He knew the concept of shared delusions—isolated villages driven to curious madness, cannibalism, mass suicide, mutual slaughter—but Mikasa had revealed the details of her dream without any input from Armin, and his dreams had manifested before she had found him in the mess hall that night. Surely it would be nearly impossible to suffer the same fantasy at the same time, its details so precisely matched.

Then again, if any two people could, it would be him and Mikasa. Eren had bound them too tightly. Vines grown on the same trellis would twist together until they were impossible to untangle. Armin and Mikasa, they had surrendered to that willingly, hadn’t they? In step so much that their hearts beat as one, forever chasing a single target. In this, too, they were one and the same: daring not to hope and hoping nonetheless, when hope was such a difficult thing. A fire that could warm or burn you with the same flame, fickle, double-edged, raising your spirits only to crush them. Armin had already lost Eren twice; getting him back the first time was miracle enough. Expecting it again—and after Eren had committed such unspeakable, unforgiveable horrors—was pure folly.

Armin flipped open the neglected report on his desk. It was written in Onyankopon’s tidy hand, perfectly legible, but as he looked at it now it might as well have been East Sea characters for all the sense it made. Normally he would have been at least halfway through the evening’s work at this point, but his mind was so distracted that he had yet to start. And even as he scolded himself and redoubled his attention, it was useless. His thoughts wandered irresistibly back to Mikasa and Eren. 

He dropped his head into his hands. _Stop it_ , he thought angrily. _Stop it_. Armin had been doing well enough shutting these feelings away. It was not fair for them to resurface now, as potent as they had been when Eren was alive. It rose through him like a riptide, and with it came the urge to cry that he’d fought back the entire day. 

He shoved the report across the desk with a little too much force. It slid clear off the opposite edge and fell to the floor in a scatter of fluttering paper. Better frustrated than miserable. Armin felt the brittle heat of anger surge in his chest, and he let it grow large enough to unseat his sadness.

As he was considering leaving the report there, turning out the light, and leaving for his quarters—ah, but that brought its own set of problems, didn’t it—a knock rattled the door. And a familiar one, just as Mikasa’s footsteps had been, pitched quietly to avoid a shock but with enough force that he couldn’t miss it engrossed in his work. Armin did not rise from his seat but he managed his expression into a more acceptable one. Mikasa did not deserve his annoyance, not when it was directed at himself. 

(Well. Himself and Eren.) 

“Come in,” he said. 

The door opened a few tentative inches, and a slice of Mikasa’s face appeared in the gap. Her gaze flickered briefly—from Armin behind the desk to the papers littering the floor—but her expression showed no surprise. At his weary wave, she entered the room and shut the door behind her with a quiet _click_. Still without comment, she stepped around the mess and stood at the left edge of his desk.

Everything she did was so deliberate. Armin sensed the question in her body language; it would have been obvious to him even if he wasn’t expecting it. At least Mikasa was not one to hesitate—only Eren had ever induced that uncertainty in her—and she spoke across his awkward silence.

“Well? What do you think?”

Armin leaned back in his chair and let out a protracted sigh. He rose heavily and rounded the desk, crouching to collect the papers he had let fall. Out of order now, but he couldn’t be bothered to arrange them properly. His attention was scattered enough, especially with Mikasa here awaiting an answer. Not that it was unreasonable. Now that Armin checked the time, he saw it was much later than he’d realised. Most would have retired to their rooms, and Mikasa must have been tired. Armin certainly was, and thinking it he felt the idle weight of his eyelids, a marrow-deep tiredness that, once acknowledged, stole his remaining stamina.

The question wasn’t even a difficult one. Mikasa had not asked him to try and figure out this ridiculous mess; only Armin asked that of himself. In fact, Mikasa had asked for very little. Still, she had been shy when she had said it, shy when she so rarely was, and that alone had struck Armin like a slap.

“Of course,” Armin said, soft-like. He slotted the report back into its envelope, his eyes fixed on the cover rather than Mikasa’s face. He was dread-afraid to see her expression. “It can’t hurt.”

When was the last time they had slept together? That was all Mikasa had asked of him, to share a sleeping space. It must have been before Eren’s death. (Most things were categorised this way now. It used to be before and after the fall of Wall Maria. Then, before and after Shiganshina’s recapture. Now, Eren’s death delineated their existence into two—a boundary so much smaller, and so much greater, than those that had come before it.)

That’s right. If Armin cast his mind back, he could remember. It must have been after Eren had left them in Liberio, while they were waiting, unknowingly, for his letter to summon them to the battlefield. It had not been a deliberate decision. Late one night, after spending ten or twelve hours talking about Eren with Hanji, Yelena, Zackley, Pixis—separately, together, sometimes in confidence and other times in public—they had not had the energy to speak even to each other. Words had been unnecessary. They had fallen asleep on the floor of an empty storage room, bracketing each other, breathing each other’s air and feeling Eren’s absence so keenly it might as well have been a physical wound. Mikasa had said in a bare whisper, intended only for Armin to hear, that it was like losing an eye, so disorienting was the loss. 

At the time, sleeping together on the hard ground had sent Armin back to their years in the refugee camps. He never thought he would have felt nostalgia for then—miserable, dirty, starving—but not knowing where Eren was, or what he was thinking, had been truly unsettling. 

Now, at least, they had beds big enough to share. Now, at least, they knew exactly where Eren was.  
  
  
  
There was plenty of space for a senior officer to have private quarters these days, and Armin and Mikasa each had their own. Armin had been in her room before, but it felt strange with the veil of night—more intimate, though not unpleasantly so. Like his own, it was sparse. Her bed, the bedside tables, one bearing a lamp and the other a stone tablet from the Azumabito engraved with foreign characters. Her desk lacked any personal effects but for her scarf, which nowadays mostly sat there in a neatly folded square. From afar it could have been anything at all, an anonymous black shape. But sometimes Armin saw Mikasa touch it, and there its true value became apparent: she handled it so gently, as if she was afraid it would disintegrate; as if its weave was spun through with silver.

She did not wear it anymore. Instead she would pass the scarf between her hands and unfold it, laying it back and forth over her forearm as she did so until it hung off her like a flat snake. Then the moment would pass, and Mikasa would fold it up again, her motions an almost perfect reversal. She would place it back on the desk with the kind of cautious care typically reserved for tea ceremony. Armin had bore witness to this exactly once, but in the way she moved—so naturally, almost by rote—it was obvious that Mikasa had performed this same ritual many times alone. 

Armin was already in his nightclothes, albeit with shoes on (for the short walk from his room to hers), and so he toed them off and slid beneath the covers. Mikasa had yet to change. She did so with her back to him, and Armin watched the naked muscles of her shoulders flex as she pulled on a sleep shirt. When had he last seen her in pyjamas? That was much harder to recall than the night spent in the storage room. Then they had both been so exhausted that they had not bothered to change at all, beyond stripping off their gear. 

With easy grace she slipped into the empty space to Armin’s left. The sheets whispered as she settled. They were face to face. Her gaze was so intense that Armin swore he could feel its heat. 

“Will you be able to sleep?” she asked. There was a nervous edge to her voice but a warmth as well, and it filled Armin with fondness. His irritation had all but disappeared in her company.

“I think so,” he said. “I could do with a good night’s sleep.”

Honestly, Armin was not so sure. But he didn’t think that was a worthy answer, and he owed it to Mikasa to try. This was her idea, her experiment, and as doubtful—or uneasy—as Armin was, well, he would have been lying if he said he did not nurse the tiniest hope that something would happen. It had to be better than whiling away so many miserable hours in the cold air of the mess hall.

Besides, he _was_ tired. Very, very tired, and now that he was laying flat it was harder to ignore the strength of its current. The sheets were cool and soft, somehow softer than his own though they were identical, and the familiar smell of Mikasa’s skin—a blandly pleasant human smell, clean cotton and warm leather—eased his restless mind until it stilled completely.  
  


* * *

  
The first time they were transported there had haunted Armin. Stood on a rooftop in Shiganshina, tiles sliding away where they fell, the air thick with particles of the dissolving wall, with titan steam, with their brittle disbelieving terror. He remembered with unreal vividness how Eren’s voice had echoed in his mind, the strange terrain he summoned them to. An endless night as bright as day with a spray of stars, the overlapping sensation of yielding sand and terracotta tiles under his knees. 

It had none of that terrifying nature now. Eren, steady and certain as he threatened the world, as he promised a fight—it felt so long ago, so abstract, that _that_ could have been the dream. Here it was serene. Some soft sound in the distance kept it from being eerily silent, but it was not so distinct that Armin could determine what it was. 

Him and Mikasa were standing next to each other. They were dressed as they had been in bed—sleepshirts and trousers, their feet sunk into the sand. It was dry, soft, barely warmer than the air around them. 

“Mikasa,” he said quietly, afraid to speak aloud in the peace of this place. But his voice was not crude or crushing; it was perfectly in-keeping. 

Mikasa looked at him. Was his face as filled with awe, as stupefied? It was hard to know. Armin felt stunned, numb, as blank as a flat stone. 

“You’re here too,” she whispered. She reached for his hand and squeezed it. Breathlessly, she said, “It worked. It really worked.”

Armin could not understand what she meant, not really, but he had the feeling that neither did she. Still, of all the unnatural, impossible things that they had experienced in their lives, this was such a small one by comparison. And, for once, benign. Being here with Mikasa, it seemed absurd to have pretended the dreams were meaningless, a wishful creation of his own mind. No, this could be nothing less than real. As real as Mikasa’s hand in his, the air that filled his lungs, the stars scattershot above them.

“… Yeah,” Armin croaked. “You were right.”

He turned to look at her. Mikasa had never been the most demonstrative, her joy a rare and private thing, but Armin could not recall the last time she had smiled even a little. There had been a light in her eyes of late, but an odd one. Cool, determined, untouchable: the same look Levi had after Erwin’s death. Following a promise to its bitter end.

There was none of that in her now. Nothing but pure amazement, a child’s expression on her adult face. 

They walked together. Ahead, that enormous column blazed against the night, seething, its edges flickering like a flame. It was hard to look away from, even as it burned so brightly its shape remained when Armin closed his eyes. An eerie monolith, but it no longer disturbed him as badly as it had before.

“Look,” Mikasa whispered. 

It was as if he had appeared from nothing. A dark figure sat cross-legged on the crest of a gentle slope. He was limned by violet-white light, picked out like some holy thing in this holy place. It could only be Eren. His face was indistinct from this far, but even so it was clear that he was turned to face them. Armin’s heart leapt into his throat. It should not have been surprising. Before he had woken many times with Eren’s face in his mind, but now—with Mikasa’s presence, the clarity of her touch—it felt yet more real, more possible, that he could be sitting there.

They ran to him. Dread turned Armin’s stomach, fear that they would never reach him, forever lapping this landscape despite its fathomless expanse. But Eren’s features were taking shape, and his eyes were on them, a warm expression softening his face so that it was almost unrecognisable. Armin had not seen such tenderness from him since that evening on the rail cart, a rare blush that had coloured even his ears. 

The silence seemed denser, greater, with the sound of their panting breath, the sand kicked up in a spray. They stopped abruptly a short distance away. Mikasa’s grip went lax; Armin felt his hand drop back to his side. He sensed it, too, a wariness that they had been trying to ignore, that Eren might choose once again to abandon them. It had happened too often now—a burnt child fears the fire—and latterly it had been by Eren’s own choice.

Very quietly, Armin said, “Eren?”

He could have cringed at the way his voice shook on that single word, but Armin felt too fragile to be self-conscious. Though he knew that he had dreamt about—or visited—Eren all those nights before, it had never felt quite like this. He could not remember touching Eren, or talking to him, only the mere sense of his familiar soul when Armin woke those cold mornings. That had been painful enough. This could very well kill him.

Mikasa dropped on to her knees. Her trembling hands hovered uselessly in the air, and it was only after a long moment that she found the strength to reach towards Eren. There, then, a great shuddering intake of breath when her fingers touched his face—turned up towards them, not some pale shadow but Eren, _Eren_ —and Armin felt his own helpless collapse, sinking on to the ground next to her. Mikasa’s hand fit the shape of Eren’s jaw against the curve of her palm. He leaned into it, and that alone flooded Armin with the desperate longing he’d been trying so hard to suppress.

“It’s really you,” Mikasa said. She tucked a lock of hair behind his ear, and then withdrew as if too much contact would upset this shivering peace. “You called us both here, didn’t you?”

The quiet that came this time was tense. Waiting for Eren to answer, to explain the impossible fact of him there, and Armin and Mikasa as witness. But then—he opened his mouth, his throat working, and no sound came out.

It sent a shudder up Armin’s spine, to his hands and lips; they tingled numbly. It took no time at all for the realisation to settle cold in his stomach. Eren could not say anything.

Armin’s throat was so dry that he had to swallow before he could speak. And even then, his voice was a miserable rasp. “We can’t hear you.”

Eren closed his mouth. He frowned and looked away. A sad, guilty shadow passed over his face, as if he had expected as much and had chosen to try anyway. It was such an Eren thing to do that it trapped the air in Armin’s lungs. Maybe—maybe, after seeing them separately so often and stuck mute, he had hoped for some change now they appeared together. 

Armin heard Mikasa’s sigh. Not bitter, nor sad, just resigned. It passed from her lips easily, and when she spoke her voice was bright.

“It’s alright,” she said, softly, soothing. “It might take a while?”

Armin felt the weight of her redirected stare. Slowly, with no certainty whatsoever, he nodded. “Yes. Maybe.” He tried a shaky smile. “I mean, it took us this long to figure it out. What’s a little longer.”

The reassurance felt more like it was for himself and Mikasa than it was for Eren. His gaze was diverted still, his expression dimmed by that sorry look, as though their words had not reached him. 

“It doesn’t matter,” Armin said quickly. He felt the urge to touch Eren and he did not fight it—the novelty that he _could_ touch him too irresistible—and his hand closed around Eren’s wrist. It shouldn’t have surprised him that his skin would be warm, to feel the heft of bone in his grip. Still, Armin felt his breath catch, and the words he’d meant to say fell away. 

His heart kicked in his ears. Mikasa was nodding, close enough that even as he stared at Eren he could sense the movement of her head. 

“That’s right,” she said, and settled her hand on Armin’s shoulder. “It’s enough that you’re—that we’re here together.”

Armin felt a gasping cry burst from his chest. It was too much in that fraction of a moment, the familiar weight of Mikasa’s hand and Eren’s attention—given fully now when so often he had looked past them, seen through them to some unknowable future—and to sense Eren’s pulse thudding against his fingers through the dust-soft skin of his inner wrist. 

The sky split open. Darkness spilled in.  
  
  
  
Armin woke with a hard start. His heart throbbed in his chest, so violently he could feel it in all of his pulse points. Once he was aware of his own waking, he noticed he was looking directly into Mikasa’s eyes. Facing each other, as they had gone to sleep the night before. Close enough that their noses could touch. She looked as startled as he felt, her face broken open with the raw power of the dream still in her.

“Armin,” she said, and her voice shook despite its softness. “You were there. We were there together.”

It was undeniable. The memory of her hand in his—the hardness of a soldier’s palm, her long slender fingers—made it impossible to say otherwise. Mikasa had been in his dream; Armin in hers. A confirmation of what he had suspected but dare not allow his hurting, hoping heart.

“And Eren,” Armin said hoarsely. It was only when he spoke that he felt the lump of tears in his throat, his temples aching. 

Mikasa’s eyes widened a fraction. Wild, disbelieving awe. 

“He was, wasn’t he,” she said, nodding. She smiled, sad, wistful, relieved. Her hands searched for his under the sheets and clutched them together. “We found him.”

The dark of the room made her monochrome, though her gaze—her touch—held him hostage until she let him go and slid to the edge of the bed. The sulphurous smell of a match flared as Mikasa lit a candle and shook it out. Smoke unfurled in thickening streaks around her face. Armin rose and went to the window, twitching the curtain. The sky had the washed-out colour of dawn, no sign yet of the rising sun but only the dark receding to a bluish twilight. Looking back, the candlelight haloed Mikasa in orange. She seemed at peace. As Armin watched, she stood and poured two glasses of water from a pitcher at her desk.

“Here,” she said, and nudged one against his forearm. 

He was still shaking; the glass knocked against his teeth as he drank from it. If Mikasa noticed she said nothing, but she did take the glass from him and set it aside. She leant against the windowsill to his left, shoulder to shoulder. The few inches Mikasa maintained over him were more apparent like this, but Armin found her solid presence simply comforting. A body accustomed to hardship, so much like his own yet so different. Her thoughtless kindnesses (and how significant that thoughtlessness was in itself) gutted Armin, of the water, her gentle taking of the glass when he couldn’t feel his fingers.

The silence was comfortable. There was no sign of the barrack’s waking. Outside the grounds were perfectly still, too early yet even for stable duties. Armin glanced at Mikasa. That unguarded look, made softer still by the half-light, by the dream, was absorbing.

It felt almost instinctive to lift his hand to her face. As if he meant to wipe away a tear, but there was none; instead the tips of his fingers went to Mikasa’s scar. It had flattened somewhat over the years, though its puckered edge gave it away in certain lights. And if you touched her cheek, it was obvious—the satin smoothness of scar tissue, a startling ripple beneath the even skin below her eye.

“Ouch,” she said flatly, watching Armin with a warm expression. He stroked the scar with his index finger, just once.

“I can’t believe you never had it,” Armin said wryly. He smiled. “You always did need a flaw.”

To his surprise, Mikasa laughed. A short, single breath of laughter. She slid her own fingers over it where Armin’s had been, tracing the shape over her cheekbone. A neat little crescent. A funny, sad thought came unbidden into Armin’s mind: even with Eren long gone, his scarf folded away, still he left his indelible mark on her. As sure as her mother's tattoo at her wrist.


	2. Chapter 2

It became a regular habit. Armin would struggle through the day’s work—writing, reading, signing, stamping—though in an absent-minded way, his hands yielding to routine as his thoughts drifted. His anticipation at the night ahead was a constant distraction, incessant as hunger and just as difficult to ignore. But it also made things easier. Meetings were not so interminable, paperwork not such a drudgery. Armin did not want to admit the traitorous joy it brought him to witness Eren in the flesh, so to speak, but it was like a light that found its way into all places. Even these dark and desperate ones. 

The first visit had been brief. The following ones, however, were getting longer and longer. In _paths_ , time was slippery, insubstantial: even when Armin tried to count the seconds, he would lose his train of thought as soon as it began. They had no control over when they would wake, nor did the time spent there reflect conscious reality. Sometimes only a couple of hours would have passed in the waking world; sometimes it would last the whole night through. Eternal and ephemeral as a dream, as vivid as the rising day. 

Eren still could not speak aloud. He tried sometimes—it was reactive rather than deliberate, as if he would forget his limitations with their company, even in this peculiar place—but the futility of it was agonising. Once Armin had tried sleeping with pen and paper, but his hands were always empty in paths. It didn’t matter, though, as long as Eren was there. As long as he could hear them. Eren would smile at their conversation. He would shake his head or nod. And his face would crumple at their sadness when it emerged. 

They did not ask about the rumbling; they struggled even to talk about the new life they lived in Eren's absence. Armin felt the cutting edge of his anger when it surfaced in his memory. Inchoate, childish, but a warranted anger, and he recognised his frayed emotions too well to let them take over. He was certain that Eren must have regretted what he had done. What good would it do to scream at him when he could not reply in turn? Armin did not want an explanation: none would have been good enough. He did not want an apology, though once—and only once—Eren had disappeared after scoring _sorry. sorry. sorry._ into the sand. Armin had not been able to look at it. Mikasa had stared in startled silence. And when they awoke, ejected from that world as if Eren had driven them from it, the bitterness in Armin’s mouth could not be washed away.

Really, Armin didn’t know what he wanted. 

It still pained him, though not so brightly, so sharply. It had dulled to an old ache. In time, that too would fade to nearly nothing as most sore things did. Sometimes Armin wondered if coming here made it worse. That seeing Eren was no different from worrying the scabbing wound. Then, he would look at Mikasa and Eren, the confluence of the two and what they were to him—safety and strength—and the fear would slide away. Armin had no urge to chase it.  
  


* * *

  
Jean’s presence at his door should not have been a surprise. They worked together enough. With so many matters to attend to, and so few of the senior officers remaining—slaughtered in Floch’s coup, transformed into titans, their own lost during the rumbling—he had as much authority as Armin did these days. He made a good leader, even outside active war time. And Armin, of course, liked him very much, which helped plenty if you were going to discuss international negotiation strategies for five hours without pause.

But the sight of him outside professional matters was jarring. It shouldn’t have been—Armin should have made more of an effort, but time slipped away like river water—and now he was not quite sure what to say with Jean standing in the threshold of his office. He had a complicated look on his face. Just some weeks ago, their greeting had been warmer, more familiar, an intimacy born out of shared survival—sometimes Jean even went to hug him. There was none of that now. His narrow eyes had taken on a brisk, scrutinising look. It wasn’t cold, necessarily, but Armin did not relax as he often would in his company. 

“Armin,” Jean said. He nodded an acknowledgement from the doorway, and Armin realised he was waiting to be invited in. That disturbed him even more. He had never required such formal instruction before.

Still, Armin did so. “Jean, it’s good to see you.” He offered him a smile, though his unease made it feel greasy, insincere. “Come in, please.”

There was an even stranger pause—Jean’s hand, braced against the doorframe, tightened visibly—until he stepped forward into the room. He lowered himself into the opposite seat so slowly it was as if his muscles were sore. Armin almost asked about it. He could have made a joke, _back on the drills again, huh? I’m jealous_ —but Jean’s voice cut him short. 

“It’s been too long,” he said. The words were kind but his voice lacked any real warmth. “Since I’ve seen you in civvies, I mean—I feel like I only ever see you behind a desk these days. Let’s get some drinks tonight. Connie’s free, too.”

It should have been a welcome offer. But something about the way he spoke, his sombre expression, filled Armin with foreboding. Jean had clearly noticed that something was up. Not that he should have been surprised; Jean had known them long enough to recognise a shift, and it must have been obvious with the changing moods of him and Mikasa both. Still, Armin tried to rationalise it. They were finally emerging out of the storm of their misery, surely Jean should have been pleased about that? He needn’t know about the dreams. That the cause of their new vigour had been the source of their sadness in the first place. 

Armin agreed in a distracted sort of way. Really, he couldn’t say no—if Jean had even the slightest sense of what was going on—that something _was_ going on—a refusal would have pushed him past suspicion. “I’ll tell Mikasa when I see her,” said Armin.

Jean nodded. He seemed a little mollified by his agreement. A flash of relief, brief but unmistakeable, lifted his frown. “Great. Thanks. It’ll be good to see you, the both of you.” The chair creaked as he stood from it. Even with the desk between them Jean towered over Armin, but something in his manner (his restless hands, his swivelling gaze) made him seem very small. “Sorry for the short notice. We should talk more often.”

And with those ominous words, Jean turned on his heels and stalked out of the room. All Armin could do was watch the back of his head before the door closed him off from view.

  
  
  
“Alright. Just what is up with you two?”

Jean hissed the question under his breath so that only Armin could hear. He had put on a casual expression but one that nevertheless betrayed real concern. His eyes gave him away, an anxious fondness softening his furrowed brow.

Armin had not expected the _talk_ to occur as an ambush. The public house they were in wasn’t busy—it was a weeknight—but still there was enough noise that Jean would not be heard over the clamour. The tankard in Armin’s hands was sweating, the condensation icy against his hot palm. Connie had insisted on buying the drinks ( _so much better here than the horse piss served at mess_ ) and they had been walking in tandem until Jean caught his sleeve at the elbow. 

Struggling to conceal his surprise, Armin adopted a casual tone. He said, “Sorry? What do you mean?”

Jean huffed out a short sigh and took a drink. He had the impressive ability to look frustrated as he did so, frowning over the rim of his pint. “Don’t give me that. You know that I know you better than that.”

“I just want to know what you mean,” Armin said, trying to sound diplomatic. And it was spoken honestly—he wanted to know _exactly_ what Jean meant. 

Him and Mikasa had not established that they should keep Eren a secret, but that they had naturally done so was telling. It was a private matter, anyway. Eren has summoned them and them alone, and their night visits did not disrupt their daily responsibilities. Still, Armin recognised the protective nature of their secrecy. The silent awareness that if the others found out, they would not be so pleased as him and Mikasa were.

Another frown, this one deeper. Jean shoved his hair back off his forehead. Ahead of them, Connie and Mikasa had located a table, and in spite of their obvious absence they were talking happily still. A rare show of tact, coming from those two. Armin wondered whether Jean had asked Connie to do so, and though it was his own supposition his skin prickled with irritation. It was not pleasant to imagine them talking behind their backs, even if it was intended to be a kindness. Especially if it was for some misguided intervention as clumsy as this.

“What I mean is… is…” Jean chewed on his cheek, searching for the words. He avoided Armin’s stare, focusing his attention on his drink instead. “I don’t see as much of Mikasa as I see you, but I see enough. And you two, you’ve both been weird lately.”

At Armin’s non-response, Jean swallowed another mouthful of beer. It seemed to give him the courage to continue.

“You’re just. Listless. It’s like you’re somewhere else even when you’re right in front of me.” He gestured hopelessly at Armin stood before him, and then flicked his hand towards Mikasa at the table. “I’m worried. You and Mikasa—you are the most focused people I know. And… with Eren, I… It’s been so hard. For all of us, but I can’t imagine what it’s like for you two.”

 _Don’t_ , Armin thought. _Please don’t._ His face had gone hot and tight, his chest compressed into a narrow box. Jean’s voice was softening as he went on, and that was much, much worse than the frustration he had half-expected.

“I know there’s nothing we can do, or say, really. But we do care about you. Us lot—what’s left of us—we’re a team, right?” Jean said, dropping almost to a whisper. He smiled weakly, a strained smile, as if it pained him to say the words. Or as if unsure that Armin would agree.

Armin took a moment to gather himself. The sad stone lodged between his ribs shifted with each breath, deep and even, until it became bearable once more to open his mouth. The threat of tears had passed. In the face of Jean’s obvious upset he felt a strange steel shore up his unwieldy grief. 

He touched Jean’s arm. “We’re okay,” he said, and anyway that much was true. They were more okay than they had been in months, since Eren’s death, but Jean need not know the reason for the improvement. “We’re just trying to get back to normal as much as possible. To focus on what we can do.”

Jean scowled. His mouth tightened into a little moue. “Okay. But you know that you _can_ talk to us.” He glanced over at Connie and Mikasa, nursing their drinks at the table. Connie was talking away still, Mikasa’s face set in neutral amusement as she nodded along. 

Going through the motions, Armin thought as he watched her. And then thought of himself, brushing off Jean’s concern as though it was no more than empty words. Guilt gnawed at him, though not quite enough to upset his secret resolve. He patted Jean’s shoulder.

“Of course I know that.” Armin turned again to Mikasa, pointedly this time. “We both know that. I just… I think this is one of those things that we can’t talk about. Not yet.”

Jean followed Armin’s gaze. He saw it there still, sometimes, that teenage yearning. Over the years, after all that they had been through, Armin had watched Jean’s crush mature into a sad wistfulness. He must’ve wondered what could have been, or what could still be, with Mikasa. It was near impossible to shake off these childhood things, that Armin knew well enough. He was a fool to think Eren’s passing would have been a settled and peaceful thing in his memory—a part of his life that could be neatly boxed away into the past. It was never so easy. People felt pain in old scars until the day they died. Sometimes Armin forgot his cuts wouldn’t heal themselves any longer until he found blood tracked all over his clothes. Mikasa still went to touch her scarf, and in that unbearable moment in which her hand hovered at her collar with nowhere to go, she grieved all over again. Humans were such awful creatures of habit.

Jean dropped his voice lower still. “Look after her, okay?”

“You know as well as I do that she doesn’t need looking after.” Armin smiled dryly. “But I try to be there.”

Armin didn’t know how to say otherwise. That he was at sea as much as Mikasa was, and they were clinging on to the same wretched hope. Eren had deigned to throw them a lifeline when he had left them to drown in the first place. And yet here they were, so grateful, so desperately grateful. Perhaps Armin had been wrong about the folly of a second miracle; perhaps there was some beauty left in this world for people like them.

Jean, who had fallen silent, shook his head.

“Right. Sorry. You two are so close, I…” He struggled to speak for a moment, trailing off. When had communication become this difficult between them, this fraught? Finally, he drew himself back up with a deep breath, holding his tankard in against his chest like it was something precious. “Come on, let’s go join them.”

(But as they sat, and drank, and laughed, Armin could not help his wandering thoughts. A second miracle. Even as he’d thought it, some secret part of his mind had asked if he was really so sure. Armin could recognise the danger of this. Surrendering to the sleeping world because the waking one was too cruel, too cold, too empty. Was the idea of continuing on without Eren so unbearable that Armin and Mikasa would give over to this other place, empty of anything _but_ Eren?

Armin did not let the thought linger, afraid; afraid it would take root, afraid to give it too much credence, because it felt true and that scared the shit out of him. That Eren in their dreams—in paths—would be a sad and broken thing rather than a joyful one. Armin wanted it so badly that he could not allow it to be anything other than good. It had to be. Eren had to be.)  
  


* * *

  
It was a landscape that allowed no hiding. Dry sand nurtured no life. The naked sky, shot through with stars, bore down with an acid light. Its colours shifted if you watched long enough—green, violet, yellow, twisting and pulsing as if alive. 

The three of them were sat so close that from afar they could appear as one. Armin wasn’t sure how many hours now they had spent here. Time was meaningless: day never came, they never grew tired. And still the novelty of being together remained. Often Armin and Mikasa would go quiet and let Eren’s presence suffuse them, charge them. Otherwise they spoke enough to fill his silence. About everything and nothing, the new creatures that they’d seen or plants that they’d pressed, Connie and his obsession with cameras—images so perfect you could hardly believe they were real, a single moment fixed on to a greasy slip of film. It reminded Armin of Annie still in her crystal, a little. Him crouched on the floor, Hitch lapping the tiny box of a room. She would flip open the paper with a dramatic flourish, insisting that if Annie had to listen to his dry account of the latest news, then she should at least get to see some pictures and a pretty face.

This was different, of course. Armin had not known until after that Annie had heard them through her faceted prison. Eren, meanwhile, was practically effervescent. His smile tore Armin’s attention from any morose thought; sometimes he laughed, which his muteness only gave more power. Armin would watch him throw his head back without the distraction of his voice, the light catching his eyeteeth, Eren’s face creased with the sheer force of it, and he would have to look away. The feelings struck him like a physical blow, like a punch to the stomach. One of those from Eren had been more than enough to leave him reeling, but Armin’s own affection was a greater agony. It tied him into knots that lasted the waking day. And then, at night, he would return for this most perfect torture. 

It frightened Armin. That he did not want to stop despite the hollow exhaustion it left him with. He was not just worrying at the wound anymore—he was making new ones. And it scared him worse that he saw the same in Mikasa.

It was not that she was sad. She moved through the world with her usual ease. She no longer stared out into the middle distance, lost to some possible future that was no longer possible. But Armin could not forget how she had looked that night at the table with Connie; what Jean had said; and what his own mind had supplied, unprompted: _going through the motions._

Mikasa was so spirited here, and so calm. Armin could not help but wonder if she felt the same fear that he did. If her insides also twisted at the first blinkered sight of Eren’s perfect face, at the sensation of sand underfoot, just as much as when they woke alone—together—in her quarters. Panic and thrilling joy in equal measure, inextricable from one another. It made Armin feel ill. It made him feel like he was someone else altogether. He could have been nine years old, twelve, fifteen, knowing Eren’s presence without having to look and find him there. Feeling his sturdy weight as they sat back to back. Counting Eren’s breaths as they slept in the same bed. Wanting him with such intensity that he couldn’t speak sometimes, because whatever he would say would give him away.

It had been like trying to hold water in his cupped palms, back then. It still was. Looking at Eren’s serene and silent face, Armin felt every thread of his soul unspooling. There would be no catching it now. It had spun out of his control long ago, up and up and up into the glittering canvas of the sky.  
  


* * *

  
It was unusual for Historia to visit Survey Corps headquarters. On her arrival, she had come with an impressive attachment of staff, but she managed to shake them by the day’s end and soon a wagonload of attendants was sent away. As at ease as she was now with her position, its more extravagant trappings didn’t suit her. Historia admitted shyly once that she still felt most comfortable among them. And then, laughing, that she did _not_ miss the uniform, the food, nor the beds. No one could argue with that.

Nevertheless, she would be spending several days at base. A private room had been set up, and the necessary documents laid on its desk. This was not just a friendly occasion. Hizuru had arranged a visit, and it was only appropriate that Paradis’ head of state make an appearance. Historia never shied away from these responsibilities; if anything she was engaged and alert, and often offered valuable insight. She certainly had a better sense of what people on the ground were feeling than Armin did.

They had a few days’ grace before the delegation arrived, and so the 104th spent that first evening together at mess. Niccolo produced an excellent feast and ate with them, and the night slipped away into reminiscing. Armin enjoyed it; it had felt like a lifetime since he had done something so ordinary as eat and drink with his friends in such easy circumstances. But there had been no ignoring Eren’s absence. Armin knew he only felt it so keenly because of the regular visits they made—every night, now—but still, it rankled. 

Towards the end, Eren had no longer fit at their table. He had made no effort to, sullen and silent even as Jean baited him so deliberately. Eventually that too had stopped, Jean’s smirk growing smaller and smaller at Eren’s lack of response until it had shrunk to an uneasy grimace. 

Eren had been the one to create that atmosphere. A barbed awkwardness, some fault line splitting him off too far to reach. Why only now did he let Armin and Mikasa in? When it was too late to do anything? Watching his friends eat, drink, laugh, Armin felt such an intense flash of angry grief that he couldn’t breathe.

He hadn’t thought himself obvious. Around him, the world went on. Jean caught Connie under his arm and scratched the rough bristle of his scalp as though he were a dog, and Historia’s eyes were screwed shut with wild laughter. But under the table Mikasa’s hand found his knee and she squeezed with just enough force that Armin felt her strength ground him. 

Though when he turned to look at her face—expecting a gentle smile, or her steady calm—Armin saw only his own helplessness reflected there.

  
  
  
There was a week’s worth of preparation to be done in a matter of days. Accommodating Hizuru was less complicated than most other foreign states, purely because of their pre-existing affiliation. They were friendly enough that any minor error would not be taken as an egregious insult, at least. Still, this was not an aspect of diplomacy that Armin relished. Discussing strategies to deal with titans was one thing; human beings were infinitely more difficult.

He had not had the chance to see Historia much beyond that initial evening. The one person he saw with any regularity these days was Mikasa, and that was only ever at night. (And Eren, but Armin still wasn’t sure you could consider Eren a person, or rather something else entirely.) He wasn’t expecting to see her again until their briefing before the delegates’ arrival, barring the usual passing glimpses as he ran the corridors.

It was a rare moment of peace that she cornered him. The fact that Historia was willing to disturb his lunch—considered sacrosanct by most when the Corps was this busy—was ominous enough. She sat opposite him with such deliberate weight that Armin’s appetite vanished immediately. 

“Sorry,” Historia said, wincing as he set down his fork. “I just wanted to talk to you before it got truly crazy around here.”

For that, Armin supposed he should have been grateful. Better now than while he was debating tactics. “It’s okay,” he said. “I’m always willing to hear your input.”

There was an awkward pause. Historia winced again and set her neat hands together on the table. 

“It’s not about, um, official matters,” she said. “Rather, it’s about you and Mikasa.”

Armin froze. If Historia noticed his stricken look, it did not stop her.

“Are you two…” she trailed off, cheeks colouring. The sight of her embarrassment was an even greater shock, and Armin stared agape at her. “I saw you coming out of Mikasa’s quarters this morning. And the morning before.”

Shock gave way to panic. Armin did not blush—he felt the blood drain from his face to settle coldly in his stomach.

“It’s not like that,” he said, searching for an explanation even as he spoke. What could he say? Maybe it would be wiser to pretend it was exactly as Historia thought. But as he chewed his cheek in want of an answer, Historia laid her hand over his. Her expression was gentle.

“There’s no need to explain,” she murmured. “It’s difficult, isn’t it. Losing someone you love.” She lifted her head, snaring Armin’s gaze in her own with a strange intensity. “But at least you two still have each other.”

The way she said it felt almost like a warning. Armin’s blood went cooler still, and all he could do was nod stupidly.

“And you have us, too, of course.” Her voice brightened. “Who knew our squad would make it this far? We’ve been through so much together. What’s a little more?”

Guilt twisted Armin’s stomach in a vice grip. Jean first, and Historia now. These were people they cared about, that cared about them. Historia’s face was open, sincere, heart-breaking in its own subtle sadness. She loved Eren, too. She had loved Ymir, and though that felt like a lifetime ago now Armin understood how time was irrelevant in these matters. This kind of loss ate at you like maggots at a wound.

But this—this they couldn’t understand. Armin didn’t even understand it himself. His own treacherous love for Eren, a stranger in his final moments but still _Eren_ , despite everything. The sight of his boyish self, all sweet enthusiasm and enormous eyes, freed from that animal rage as the world went up in clouds of smoke and steam... it tormented Armin. They could have done something, couldn’t they? Before fate stole him away. Before Eren gave into the inevitable.

He was silent too long. Historia’s expression faltered, a flash of doubt there as she saw Armin’s naked emotions before he could rein them in.

“Thank you,” Armin said, afraid that if he hesitated any longer, Historia would ask yet more probing questions. He still felt a little raw from Jean’s interrogation. “Mikasa and I… we’re just spending what time together we can. It’s not so easy during the day. As I’m sure you can tell.”

It was a lousy excuse, though there was at least some truth to it. And if Historia did not believe him—he would not blame her—it was not obvious. She nodded and folded her hands back into her lap.

“Yes. Even after everything we’ve already dealt with, there’s still so much to do. It must be difficult,” she said, and she smiled softly. It was a Krista sort of smile, and thus it made Armin more anxious than if she had not smiled at all.

Historia did not wait for a reply. She rose from the bench suddenly and turned away, her manner brisk where it had been gentle. Armin could not help himself—he spoke before his mind caught up enough to reconsider.

“… Historia.”

She stopped mid-step and cast a glance back at him. Even from here her eyes were startling, the colour of them an almost unnatural blue. “Yes?”

“If you could see Ymir again…” He took a fortifying breath. “Would you? To talk with her. Even just to see her face.”

It was such an inappropriate question, and as he asked it his face burned with shame. Armin had to turn away, staring instead at his uneaten lunch. Congealed and cold now, it looked inedible.

“That’s an interesting question,” Historia said. She chose her words carefully, deliberately, unafraid of the tense quiet that darkened the air. “I think you already know the answer, though.”

Armin waited. He waited for her to scold him, or hit him, or—worse—to walk away in silent fury. But she did none of those things.

Finally, Historia said, “Let me ask you, then: if you could see Eren, would you? Despite everything. Despite what he did, and what you did, would you?”

The guilt sat like a millstone on his shoulders. Armin stared at his lap as though her words lay there, not accusatory but irrefutable, his answer so blatant on his face that it might as well have been carved into his forehead.

At first, Armin could only nod. And then, because that seemed unfair, and because he had asked the question of her in the first place, Armin gathered the strength to reply. It was a pathetic whisper.

“Yes,” he said. 

Historia hummed flatly. She fixed her hair, and as she tucked some behind her ear, Armin caught the briefest glimpse of her expression. Sorrow as dark and hollow as any he’d ever seen.

“Well. There’s your answer.”

She left him sitting there alone.

**Author's Note:**

> title comes from alela diane’s ‘take us back’, a song that rings so true for EMA that it’s painful. just take a look at [the lyrics](https://songmeanings.com/songs/view/3530822107858764260/) and die with me.
> 
> i almost never write chaptered fic, so i hope you enjoy the ride ahead as much as i'm enjoying writing it!


End file.
